When troubled government pension plans threaten a municipality's solvency, workers are likely to bear the brunt of reforms. Quick solutions are unlikely.

If you're worried about the impact on the municipal bond market of underfunded government pension plans, you'd do well to look at what happened in Illinois last week.

The state legislature passed a bill that would aid two of Chicago's woefully underfunded municipal pension systems by raising employee contributions and cutting cost-of-living adjustments (legislators balked at a property-tax increase originally included in the bill)....